Elizabeth Soderstrom

Strategic Partnership Officer, Water Foundation

Elizabeth Soderstrom is the Strategic Partnership Officer at the Water Foundation where she focuses on strategic planning, fundraising, and communications. For the previous two years, Elizabeth served as a Program Manager at the Resources Legacy Fund. From 2008-2015, she was a Senior Director of Conservation and Development at American Rivers where she directed work on California headwater restoration, acquiring water rights for instream flows, incorporating Native American interests and practices into river restoration, and fundraising. From 2000-2008, Elizabeth was the Senior Director for Sierra and International Rivers at Natural Heritage Institute, during which time she managed the Sharing Water Project on the Okavango River in Southern Africa, launched the Mountain Meadows Initiative, and applied adaptive management principles to river restoration as a Switzer Leadership Fellow. She also assisted both the CALFED Science Program and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy in developing and using performance measures.

Elizabeth also served as an International Engineering and Diplomacy Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science at USAID's Center for the Environment in Washington, D.C., and at USAID's Regional Center for Southern Africa based in Gaborone, Botswana. In these positions, she implemented the International Coral Reef Initiative and was an advisor and representative to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance and the Convention on Biodiversity, and researched and designed a role for U.S. assistance in the management of international rivers in southern Africa. Elizabeth received a B.A. in English Literature, a B.S. and M.S. in Biological Sciences, all from Stanford University, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.